The Teacake Gazette - Fiction

It had been Peter’s promise of America that kept Mary going—the thought of a new life beyond servitude, beyond the endless polishing of silver and mending of lace.

One day, as she was working in the garden while her mother rested from a headache, she wandered into the rose patch—a special section filled with different varieties of roses: pinks and reds, whites, and even one that looked purple. She and her mother could never quite figure out how one particular rose bush looked so violet in the sunlight.

Madame Sue Soderburg stopped, her face drawn, a cigarette burning in between her fingers despite the early hour. “They’re framing me for Roberta’s murder.”

On the mantle, a photograph in a tarnished frame showed a stern man, two children, and a woman with a hauntingly blank stare.

The little girl giggled and patted Needle’s trunk. “I think the tree heard me.”

Up and up and up the butterfly went, until it reached the very tippy tops of the trees.

The canyon stretched before them under a half-moon. Cattle shuffled along the dusty trail below. Someone was stealing her livestock again.

“I thought I belonged up here,” she whispered. “But now I see I belong in the in-between.

It is with reverence and a hush of winter stillness that I present to you this series of letters from Mrs. Marian Tate—a young widow dwelling alone in the Kansas Territory during that first long, uncertain season of 1855.

They welcomed me kindly—Mr. James Calloway with his firm handshake and steady eyes, and Miss Sarah Whitmore (soon to be Mrs. Calloway) with a smile warm enough to outshine the fading sun. We spoke in their modest sitting room where a kettle simmered and the shadows grew long across the floorboards.

A Field Note from Miss Sybil Whitlow, Spring 1858 Edition Dearest Friends— It is no small thing to begin again. And yet, here we are—gathered on the page, under the lace-shadowed porch light of something new. The Wisteria Almanack  was never meant to shout. It was meant to sit quiet beside you as you shell peas or brush out your hair at twilight. A companion to the hush between stories, to the creak of old floorboards and the longing you can't quite name. We are stitched from

Though you hold this missive (or perhaps scroll it) in modern hands, I invite you to imagine, if only for a moment, that you are seated beside a low fire in a dim drawing room. A pot of tea steams on the sideboard. The scent of pressed violets lingers on the air. Outside, the wind murmurs something forgotten.

Sagebrush Ridge Territory of Kansas September to April 1855   The wind whispered secrets through the tallgrass of the Kansas prairie, rustling the pages of Marian Tate’s latest letter. Ink stained her calloused fingers as she carefully formed each word, her gaze often drifting towards the figure resting on the cot in the corner of her small cabin. Hank Dawson. He’d arrived weeks ago, a broken man found near her property line, feverish and clutching a shattered leg.   Marian,

“You are a listener too, child. The tree chose you for that.”   Elspeth blinked. “Chose me?”   “You hear what others forget. You believe in what breathes beneath the bark and behind the veil.”

An audible gasp escaped several nearby matrons. Juliet accepted the bouquet with trembling hands, conscious of the sudden silence that fell around her. Yellow roses—the flower of betrayal and broken promises. To receive such a gift at a public gathering was tantamount to social ruin.

Lord Nigel Ashcombe, Duke of Wexley, and Miss Mary Smith shared with me the details of their upcoming nuptials...I offer their words below, as they shared them with me—modest, tender, and utterly sincere.

The moment her fingers met his, the rooftop fell away in a swirl of stars and wind. Her shawl fluttered like wings, and her skirts rippled,.

Her badge caught the sun just as a rider thundered down Main Street, raising a cloud of red clay behind him. Mercy recognized the horse before the man: the gray Appaloosa with a split ear. Wild Rye, Everett Tate's mare.

"Foxes don't talk," she said automatically,...The fox's whiskers twitched in what might have been amusement. "And humans don't lose their shadows—unless the fair folk steal them."

Margaret Abernathy found the journal six months after Robert died....Then a name appeared that she’d never heard before.